Random Extra Pics from Fall Break

One of the finer places I've taken a leak

Wild horses in Andorra

Look closely and you'll see Nick

Not quite as good as New England

Herd of goats.  This I did not see, but Nick says they were roaming the town without being given direction from anyone

Midterms this week.  Seeing Real Madrid vs. Hercules here in Alicante this weekend.  La Liga game #3.  No complaints here.

-Michael

My 21st Birthday Weekend

This is 21 year old Nick for those of you who haven't met me yet.

Estany Negre with Port de Baiau (2,756m) in the distance.

Andorra la Vella.The city of 22,000 people and 1,000 stores. Super random; apparently a tax haven of sorts? Not fully clear how that all works but the Wikipedia page tells us that 80% of GDP is derived from tourism. For Mike and I, logistics worked beautifully up in Andorra…maybe that's typical in countries whose total area amounts to 468 km².

Friday morning: a $2.75euro bus ride from the city took us straight to Arinsal, a small mountain town at the foot of the ski resort, 'Pal Arinsal' owned by Vallnord, and the Coma Pedrosa natural park beyond the resort. A bit cold to start off, but a real bluebird day! Maps weren’t great but, again, this is not a huge country, and thus the park wasn't too vast. Found the access to the park after a small walk up a ski trail. We followed the GR 11, a trail that runs through much of the park, and it treated us just fine. Met a Spanish guy thru-hiking it, from the Basque country west to east through the Pyrenees all the way to Cadaqués (a town north of Barcelona on the Mediterranean), who was on his 29^th day (out of 42 or so he figured)! Peaked a mountain called Port de Baiau (2,756meters) on the Spanish border. Gettin’ steep up there boss! A solid day hike and we were back on the bus heading for Andorra la Vella by 5pm.

Hollah!

Not too cloudy.

JC Penny Flannel ($19.99) and an apple on the peak!

Westward view of Spanish Pyrenees (maybe a bit of France also).

Beautiful place, and no fellow hikers!

I managed to leave my water bottle on that bus, and was waiting for the ‘L5 line’ to roll back through town in hopes of recollecting it at about 6:30, that’s when I saw Micaela walking down the street. Kind of nice to run into old friends on the streets of Andorra. Who would’ve guessed? Originally, Mike and I had pictured Saturday being relaxed because of Micaela being there and it being my birthday night (kind of) on Friday (maybe we’d want a recovery day?). However, that didn’t really happen, Micaela insisted on wanting to ‘do something epic tomorrow,’ and who were we to decline such a gung-ho mentality? I was awake at midnight, but not much longer!

Saturday (my 21^st Birthday) we went back to the same Natural Park via the bus to Arinsal and intended to do a lesser version of what we’d completed the day before. After all, this was Micaela’s first ‘real hike’ in her own words…but when the opportunity to head up into the middle valley rather than the western valley of the park arrived, it was a little too appealing… at shortly after that point we realized this was another perfect bluebird day in the Pyrenees and a summit attempt was a real possibility! Hell yeah! Passed some cows, stopped, hydrated and ate when Micaela became mildly dizzy, and then made the final push to reach the summit of Pic del Pla de I’Estany (2,859m) on the French border! Solid first hike right there for Meeks. I was feeling good and made the semi-perilous trek across a 200 yard ridge of cols to the true summit. Descent was also a success, Saturday night too. Andorra la Vella isn’t the most exciting city and instead of the standard American 21^st birthday experience of drinking very excessively, we found a Fresca, a franchise restaurant with an all-you-can-eat buffet. After a week of walking my taste buds forgot about that little thing called ‘decreasing marginal-utility;’ I think I consumed something like 3,000(+)? calories. There was heaps of laughter that slowly became more painful than enjoyable as plates of food were polished off. Great finale to a great week!

Below is a link to a decent map of the Coma Pedrosa Natural Park

http://www.hola-andorra.com/arinsal/english/comapedrosagb.html

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We joked about Micaela having a High Altitude Cerebral Edema (did not happen thankfully!).

Bit steep getting up the final pitch!

View of friends and mountains from Pic del Pla de I’Estany (2,859m).

That's the section of Andorran mountains we climbed on Friday.

Peak livin' in the Pyrenees!

Continuing the Story of Fall Break

Alright so the morning after Mulhacén (Tues, Oct 12) we let ourselves sleep in before setting out off into the mountains again.  Our goal was to reach Alto de Chorillo (2,727 meters/ 8,947 feet).  Vertical rise for the day was 1,251 meters (4,104 feet) from Treveléz.  Don´t know how much distance was covered.


Anyways, the morning started off fantastic but after an hour or so we were up in the clouds with occasional glimpses of blue skies or views.

Guess what? More cows..

El pueblo blanco de Treveléz

End of the trail, Alto del Chorillo

Clouds covering what would be a view of the big ones (Mulhacén and others)

Capped off the day again with some pizza and vino.  The next day (Wednesday) we had some time to kill before catching the bus back to Granada.  We spent the early afternoon reading up on another trail with a view of Treveléz before heading back into town to ship on back to Granada for the night.  Treveléz treated us fantastically for the three nights we were there.

Nick reading

We arrived in Granada to some light rain.  At the hostel we were informed about 4 euro seafood paella dinner.  I wish I had a picture of it being cooked.  It was in three foot diameter pan that had Nick salivating ready to pounce on his share- he was second in line and crushed his generously portioned plate in mere minutes as we were in a rush to make it to the Alhambra for our allotted ticket time.  I´ll have you know Nick´s paella devouring episode parallels any story concerning Mark´s legendary ability to shovel food down (minus the mac´n cheese incident).

Not us, but demonstrates the size of the paella dish

We scurried off for our night time visit of the Alhambra, which was definitely a cool place.  Only problem: at night there is less to see.  And we only secured tickets for one part of the Alhambra.  And we couldn´t get the camera to really function properly to capture what we were seeing.  It happens.

So after the Alhambra we went back to the hostel with the following plans for the rest of the trip:  a flight to Barcelona early Thursday morning.  Nothing else booked.

We went through our options and realized that our original idea to go to a National Park wasn´t going to work out with the bus schedules.  We proceeded to throw ideas out in the air.  One of them was the country of Andorra.  Vaguely fascinated from having both read this Rolf Potts travel article a few years back, we jumped on the idea. We saw that people did actually live in this country and that hostels existed in its capital, although none of them had websites to book ahead with or check rates.  Then we found that there was a bus that goes from Barcelona to Andorra.  Then we just went to sleep cos we were flat out tired.

The next morning we rose early to make our flight to Barcelona, semi-sure of our plan to make it to Andorra.  After figuring out logistics, we determined the bus to Andorra really did exist and that we really did want to go to Andorra for the rest of the trip.  I fell asleep for most of the ride but woke up as we approached the mountains that make up the area around Andorra.  Finally we hit customs, passed right through, and were in the tiny little nation between France and Spain.  I first impression was that Andorra was stuck in 2009 as the Andorran radio station played every song that made the summer of 2009 what it was.. and by that I mean Black Eyed Peas "I´ve Gotta Feelin" pretty much on repeat (I heard it several times, trust me).

The lady at the tourism office was super helpful and provided us with great information about accommodations, as well as maps and bus schedules for the entire country (not that big, remember).  It was imperative we made sure we had somewhere to stay that night so we decided to take care of that immediately.. immediately after a celebratory "wow I can´t believe we´re actually in Andorra" beer.

The first hostel we tried was a great success.  Real cheap in a great location.  Success.  Next on the list was to contact Micaela to try and persuade her to come join us in Andorra for the weekend.  We ended up calling internationally from a pay phone as our cell phones didn´t work.  After reminding her it was Nick´s birthday on Saturday, she told us there was an 80 percent chance she would come.  We told her we would be waiting at the bus station the next day at 7pm.

Andorra La Vella

Ok.  So now we were in Andorra and at least had a roof over our heads.  What to do next?


-Michael

Mulhacén

-Monday October 11, 2010'

I woke up bright and early and got everything all my stuff together in the cold of the dark, early morning.  Nick and I walked through the tiny streets of Trevelez from our hostel to the trailhead only to realize we could not start hiking as it was pitch black on the trail- at 6:30AM this morning there was no moon, just a vast expanse of stars twinkling in the sky.  Nick went back to retrieve his flashlight and then we began our attempt to summit Mulhacén, the highest peak in continental Spain.  I enjoyed the clearness of the night sky, the fading lights of Trevélez as we hiked further and further away, and then watching the sky fade into light as the sun appeared.


Quick Facts:

Mulhacén Altitude:  3,478.6 m (11,413 ft)
Trevélez Altitude:  1476 m (4,843 ft)
Vertical Gain:  2,002.6 meeters (6,570 ft)
Roundtrip Trail Length from Trevélez:   22 k (13.67 miles)


Location:   La Sierra Nevada (The Sierra Nevada)

Hiking early on after the sunrise

I should mention the early morning was quite cold, probably around freezing point.  We didn´t have long pants or gloves so our only option was to keep moving for the body heat.  We stopped at a hut to snack and change clothes as the sweat was uncomfortable in the cold.  Shortly after though the sun started to warm things up a bit.

Big Country

After a few hours we reached this incredible waterfall area, climbed steeply beside it and reached Siete Lagunas, one of the coolest spots in nature I have ever been!

Waterfalls

Nick (sin camiseta) at Siete Lagunas

Me at Siete Lagunas

Siete Lagunas!  To the left is the peak that makes up Mulhacén!!

Final ridge, covered in snow and ice, before the clouds rolled in

We hung out at Siete Lagunas for a bit and then trekked steeply up this cliff to get onto the final ridge of Mulhacén.  Here we slowly started to encounter more and more snow and ice.  At one point I had to use a rock to crush the ice to be able to plant my feet in spots that would not cause me to fall and slide off the cliff.  My water bottle actually fell out of my bag and slid about 40 yards and straight off a cliff- yikes!!

Clouds started rolling in fast from the south.  We were lucky enough to be able to see the Mediterranean Sea for a short period of time.  Once the clouds came it became a bit dubious as to whether or not we should continue as we were reaching our cut off time for the day.  Quite luckily, a patch in the clouds opened up enabling me to see what looked like people on or near the summit.  We made the decision to push on and made it to the top!! 

On the tippity top!  Why am I clutching the small pillar?  About 3 yards behind me is a couple thousand foot cliff!!

Nick!!

This is that cliff I was talking about!  Straight down!!!!

All these pics are with views to the North.  The south was covered in clouds.

Above the clouds!!  Way up!

View to the South (direction we came from).  All clouds

 
It took us seven hours but we made it to the top, and it was absolutely fantastic.  Great views and incredibly rewarding.  The photos speak for themselves!

We powered through the way down as it started to lightly snow and then rain as we decreased altitude.  Overall trip was roughly 10 hours.  We went out that night and celebrated with much deserved warm pizza and vino!

We were lucky to get the view we got early on in the day.  This is on the descent.

Super Free Range Cows

We will post the rest of the trip soon!



-Michael

Fall Break

My apologies, but I haven't the time to post the story/photos of our journey through the Sierra Nevada and then Andorra.  Expect something soon though.  Until then, enjoy this nice video preview (Click bottom right to enjoy full screen).

-Michael

Fall Break 2010- Spain Edition- First 3 days

The break started off a bit rocky with last minute Thursday night organization of hostels for Granada and a plane ticket to Barcelona from Granada on Thurs. morning in order to get to that Parc Nacional with the tricky name (an interesting purchase to make, as it turned out, when the rest of the logistics were yet to be figured out). A bit stressful with schoolwork to complete for me and I was happy to go out and have a few drinks with my buddies in the program in the few hours I had before the 8am bus to Granada. Friday was spent exploring the city and getting psyched on being on a vacation…highlites include the $1.50euro drink + Tapa (a traditional Spanish side dish that comes with the purchase of a drink). The tapas I experienced in Granada were both bigger and cheaper than what I’ve gotten in Alicante or Mallorca (you have to order a pint of beer to get even olives or some chips in my experience in those places), yet with a small beer we were getting things like full hot dogs in hamburger buns in Granada. I enjoyed a full dinner that happened to coincide with my beer purchases. Miguelito is a little tougher to please in the food dept/is allergic to huevos (eggs) so he wasn’t as psyched on the dinner/night of drinking combination...he also didn't polish his night off with a kebab and complimentary crepe.

Can't get tickets to the Alhambra for Friday and have to book them for the following Wednesday night when we plan to return to Granada.

Miggy and some Gatos

Saturday

Day began with not the best night’s rest at ‘El Clandestino,’ a hostal in the city, and a bus to the Alpujarras, a series of ‘pueblos blancos’ (white towns) set in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada mountain range to the Southeast of Granada. Plan was to walk from town to town until we reached Treveléz, the most northern and isolated of the Alpujarras, from where we would make every effort to summit Mulhacén, the tallest mountain on continental Spain/the Iberian peninsula at 3,478.6 meters (10,000+ feet people). If we succeed it will be a 6,000 ft elevation gain to reach the top from Treveléz. Walking began in a little pueblo called Bubión and continued on for about 10kms when it started to really pour rain. It was dumping cats (see above) and dogs. Luckily we happened upon a large tent and bar with the entire village of Portugós celebrating an arbitrary Virgin while keeping out of the rain... (jokes jokes; I'm sure she was very carefully picked out). They gave us egg sandwich tapas with our $1.50 beers. Unfortunately the local hostal was full due to the celebration...a bit of confusion involved as I am inquiring with the locals as to where places of lodging are and whether rooms are available, but thankfully rain lets up and it's on to Busquistar! Not too many English speakers in these mountain towns as it turns out...kinda fun that way.

Sunset from the hostal porch in Busquistar

Sunday

Busquistar →Treveléz = 14km…manage to locate a fine hostal sans heat after asking the owner of a different establishment if hers was the cheapest in town and getting a 'no, no sé' (I don't know) in reply...a mere $30 a night in exchange for room, two beds, and bathroom. Miguelito is also a little tougher to please in the heat dept; luckily there is an extra blanket in the closet. My preparation for the Mulhacén summit attempt includes the pasted picture below.